Hunger - Choi Jin-young

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Hunger

by
Choi Jin-young

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

Title:	Hunger
Author:	Choi Jin-young
Genre:	Novel
Written:	2015 (Eng. 2025)
Length:	118 pages
Original in:	Korean
Availability:	Hunger - US
	Hunger - UK
	Hunger - Canada
	Hambre - España

	from: Bookshop.org (US)

Korean title: 구의 증명
Translated by Soje

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Our Assessment:

B : solid twist on an all-consuming love story

See our review for fuller assessment.

Review Summaries
Source	Rating	Date	Reviewer
The Korea Herald	.	9/8/2025	Hwang Dong-hee

From the Reviews:

"Despite its gruesome premise, the novella unfolds with a sadness and an almost poetic calm, as though grief itself demands the act. The book is less about cannibalism than about why someone might feel compelled to cross that line." - Hwang Dong-hee The Korea Herald

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       Hunger is the story of an ... um, all-consuming love, Dam and Gu knowing, from childhood on -- they met when they were eight --, that they belong together. In short, not quite alternating chapters -- most just a page or two -- Dam and Gu recount events of and their thoughts at this point in the present, as well as looking back on their pasts, together and apart.
       What sets this story in motion is the ultimate sundering -- Gu dies -- and then Dam's refusal to accept this final separation. (And, yes, Gu narrates his sections from the beyond.) Dam clings onto him in the only way she can think of: she hails a taxi, pretends the dead Gu is merely passed-out drunk and takes him home, and ... well, the plan is: "I will eat you, Gu".
       Dam gets off to a quick start, too, washing him and:

I clipped his fingernails and toenails, and then swept the clippings into my mouth. I combed his hair and swallowed the strands that fell out. There was even less left of my little Gu now.

       And, yes, she goes on to ... eat more. Still, the cannibalism in Hunger is not too sensationally presented, and while the squeamish will presumably still have some problems with it, Choi doesn't ... make too much of a meal of it. Yes, it is the ultimate manifestation of their love for one another -- but the focus is really more generally on their relationship and difficult lives, where they really were left with no one else, in a society that forced them to the very fringes.
       Dam was raised by her much-loved Auntie. As a child: "I poured all my affection into her hoping for the same in return, but she was always working. Putting food on the table was how she expressed her love". Auntie is a supportive figure -- but Auntie also dies .....
       Dam and Gu were very close as children, but at times drifted or were forced apart. Gu starts to work while Dam still goes to school; for a while he takes up with another woman. But the two are meant to be together, and Dam is willing to endure the greatest of hardships to remain with Gu, insisting: "We can't break up. We're forever. Don't you know that by now ?"
       Even together, they can have only a limited future: Gu's parents both disappeared, leaving him with the immense debts they had racked up, and the loan sharks they had borrowed from squeezing him dry. The debts -- and interest -- are so great that he could never work it off; Gu and Dam go on the run, but they always only manage to get a step ahead for a limited time; there's no place where the loan sharks don't eventually find them. But even this Dam can endure; what she can't bear is losing Gu.
       The narrators sustain a connection -- "Yet I can feel. I am feeling you" even the deceased Gu insists -- but it is one in which a back and forth of communication is impossible; what we get is two parallel monologues.
       Both a realistic depiction of two lives enduring various hardships and loss from childhood through adulthood and a much more ethereal depiction of after-life, both for the dead and the one surviving (with the desperate measures she takes), Hunger is haunting and raw. The absoluteness of Dam and Gu's love for one another is convincingly presented -- even as it and the extremes to which it is taken are ... a bit much.
       It makes for an odd mix of a novella. Choi manages to avoid her cannibalistic premise overwhelming the story -- yet it might have served it better if she had gone all-in with that.

- M.A.Orthofer, 20 February 2026

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Links:

Hunger:

Europa Editions publicity page
Brazen publicity page
은행나무 publicity page
Hoja de Lata Editorial publicity page

Reviews:

Other books by Choi Jin-young under review:

To the Warm Horizon

Other books of interest under review:

See Index of Korean literature

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About the Author:

South Korean author Choi Jin-young (최진영) was born in 1981.

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